 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Hi everyone. I hope this Friday evening finds you well wherever you're watching this from. I'm Claire Healy and this is the Amherst Weekly Report. This week we will talk about a number of recent events ranging from the first week of classes for students to the issue of Vote by Mail. First, the town has created a COVID-19 hotline for residents to, quote, share concerns and questions, and for the town to address complaints of large gatherings and people not properly socially distancing. According to a Gazette article, this was in response to a number of complaints and concerns regarding students gathering off campus without social distancing guidelines. The hotline has a number in email that will be checked daily by staff at Town Hall. Next, as we've all noticed, the students are back in the valley. Universities in the area kicked off their first week of classes early this year. UMass and Amherst College started the academic year on Monday. Amherst College students and a number of UMass students have returned to Amherst on campus living. We spoke with a couple of UMass students about what that looks like for them. They described an empty campus and long days in their rooms, dining halls with few people spaced far apart and testing twice a week. I think it's much harder to meet new people now, like socialize with people. You kind of have to keep into your own, I guess into your own bubble would be a better word. And then you're just taking your classes all the time. That's at least for me. I'm just taking my classes and I'm just eating food. That's it. There's more things at stake for the university than it's for us. So they have to like keep on protocols and stuff. There may be like two extreme at times, but you have to consider their sides as well. So in a way, I appreciate that they're taking this many steps so that we can have a better spring semester. We are required to wear a mask where social distancing is not possible. So like close spaces, like in your halls where ventilation is not that good. I try to wear a mask outside as well when like no one is walking around just to be safe, like just to keep the community safe. One student says as a student working security, she feels like she ends up enforcing social distancing more than she expected. I think the process being five days allowed people to come whenever they felt was best for them and kind of settle in before classes started. There's definitely like signage everywhere and we're supposed to wear masks and we have masks that they gave us. And I would say for the most part everyone wears their mask around, but there's also like, it's also a lot on the honor system. So they're expecting a lot of the responsibility of all of this pandemic precautions and social distancing and mask wearing to be really taken upon the students. Feels a lot less structured than the past two years here have been and makes, you know, it definitely puts a lot more on me as a student to have to figure out exactly what I'm going to be doing things. And like being responsible for my own, like more responsible for what I'm doing and my day. Like a lot of people are striving for some sort of human connection right now. You know, being on the internet all day is definitely taxing and I think very tiring. So, like getting outside as much as possible has been kind of like my seeming grief so far. I'm a security monitor, so I worked one shift already since being back and I would definitely say that UMass has put a lot of the responsibility of enforcing the coronavirus. Restrictions and precautions on to the employees of the university, so RAs, RGUs, security monitors, but like without a lot of oversight. And it's also not, we're being told that that's not our job description, but yet it feels like it has to be. Around the country, citizens are worried about voter suppression following a dramatic change in the US Postal Service. We've been following Amherst's decision around vote by mail and polling stations and talked with co-founder and director of free speech for people, John Boniface. He expressed deep concern about the upcoming election, specifically around negative rhetoric regarding the postal system and vote by mail. And I'm certainly concerned about the current situation with US Postal Service and vote by mail and the ways in which the president's attack on the US Postal Service will end up suppressing the vote. Then even beyond Election Day itself, there are serious concerns about what will happen with the counting of these votes. The president has been clear that he regards vote by mail as leading to massive fraud. There's no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim. There's many, many efforts that are underway to protect our elections. There's the efforts in the courts that we're part of at Free Speech for People and many other groups are part of litigating these questions before many courts, state courts and federal courts around the country. But there are also grassroots organizing efforts that are critical and there are election protection efforts that involve millions of people. So there's a national hotline, 866-R-VOTE, O-U-R-V-O-T-E. And 866-R-VOTE helps provide voters all over the country with a hotline to call when they have problems voting themselves or they witness problems at the polls or even leading up to the election with early voting or any voter registration issues. Here's what he had to say about how the Amherst area might look different this voting cycle and what that might impact. It was surprising, certainly as an Amherst resident, was to discover that not only are we fighting these kinds of measures in Texas and Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but here in Amherst, the initial proposal was to consolidate all polling locations to one site. That was untenable from a voting rights perspective and from a public health perspective. It would have increased the wait times for voters, it would have created longer lines, it would have created overcrowding and it would have been a public health threat. So I'm glad that ultimately the Amherst town council reversed its early decision on this in the first vote and voted to ensure that most original polling locations where people are used to will still be existing for voters in November and Amherst. What we're seeing right now is a direct attack by the president of the United States on the United States Postal Service. And so many people understandably fear that their ballots may not arrive in time to their election offices. That may not be the case in Amherst, but and we do have a drop box, you know that's right outside the Amherst town hall, but many people may fear that with all that's happening across the country with this attack on the US Postal Service that they would rather vote in person. And that's another reason to preserve that option. Voting by mail here in Amherst remains a very safe and secure way of voting and it does around the country. But I do also endorse the idea that where possible people insert their ballots into the drop box outside Amherst town hall, or even deliver them to early voting locations, rather than risk the possibility that, you know, the mail gets slowed. But if people feel like that's the only way they can vote is by putting in a regular US Postal Service mailbox, they should do that. If on the other hand people want to vote in person, they can now know that there are going to be polling locations for most people that they're used to using and for a few precincts, they will be voting now at the high school. According to the US Drought Monitor, Hampshire County is in moderate drought and other Massachusetts counties are facing severe drought. We spoke with a local farmer, Emily Landick, the owner of Riverland Farms in Hadley, who expressed concern about the drought and the nature of it. We've had a drought. It's been really, really dry for the whole year ever since, you know, the kind of wet season came really early or mud season came really early this year. And then we've pretty much been in a drought since then. I know it took a while for it to be declared a drought, but we've been seeing low water levels, very, very little rain all year. You know, the crops that are in fields that don't have access to the river, we're definitely seeing a difference in their growth and in their health. You know, when things are dry and stressed out, they're more susceptible to disease, they're more susceptible to pests. Things just, you know, things can go down quickly when they're really dry and stressed out because of water, lack of water. She said that she had been visited earlier that day by Representative Jim McGovern and that she had discussed with him the importance of supporting local farmers. The drought this season could be potentially devastating to many farmers, especially those without access to irrigation or wells. Next, we talked with a local Amherst resident, Anika Lopez, about civil war plaques gifted to the town of Amherst in the late 1970s. Lopez became aware of the tablets because her grandfather, an American resident and veteran, advocated for the display of the plaques to honor veterans and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment and African American veterans specifically. After looking into the plaques and their condition, Lopez found that they are currently being stored by the town in a potentially unsafe environment. She and other community members are working with the support of the town to make sure first that the plaques are stored safely and assess their condition before looking for a location for them to be publicly displayed. They include about 300 names of residents locally in the area, including members of the Massachusetts Infantry 54th Regiment. That significance is from my grandfather as an African American man. It was incredibly important to him that that be honored and displayed in a way that veterans who had given the ultimate sacrifice for freedom himself and other African Americans could enjoy displayed in the town. I actually had stumbled upon an article that was from the Gazette that was talking about the process of steps that my grandfather had gone through. He had actually had his proposal for displaying these blocks where he had the support of the town and community members. I reached out to the town manager asking about the whereabouts of these plaques and were there any current plans from at what point I was told that there were no plans at the time. So I was referred then to the historical commission and they've been very supportive in wanting this to move on and become a permanent fixture in the town. We're set to go visit the plaques just to check their condition because we need to see them to move forward. And unfortunately, we know now that they are housed in a way which is detrimental for their longevity. There is salt, there has been salt for the streets throughout the winter that is housed in the same place. So they're they're definitely at risk, but I'm a positive know we're expecting that the town will be moving them to a safe temperature controlled facility, hopefully by the end of this month. So we'll be able to see them and be able to move forward with the next steps of these of this project just as far as any monument or installation that really represents the diversity of the town that makes it inclusive that represents, you know, the schools you have people from all over. I think it would be really exciting to be able to see that and it is necessary. And just it's aligned with where we stand, you know, globally as a global community right now. Thank you all for tuning in. This is the Amherst Weekly Report. We'll see you at the same time next week.